Harvard Just Sold Bitcoin for Ethereum
The smartest money in the room is rotating.
What Happened
In a 13F filing with the SEC, Harvard disclosed that it trimmed 1.46M shares of BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) during Q4, bringing that position down to approximately $265M.
At the same time, it opened a brand-new position of 3,873,044 shares in BlackRock’s iShares Ethereum Trust, worth roughly $86.8M.
Harvard Cuts Bitcoin ETF Stake, Adds Ethereum Exposure in Q4 Filing
Overall, their combined spot crypto ETF exposure at quarter-end topped just over $352M.
Harvard first disclosed a $116M IBIT position in August 2025. By November, it had tripled those holdings to roughly $350M.
Now they’ve trimmed BTC and rotated capital into ETH.
What They’re Saying
Sean Bill, co-founder and CIO of Bitcoin Standard Treasury Company, mentioned that Harvard is likely “making a relative value trade with the belief that ETH is undervalued relative to BTC.”
Jennifer Ouarrag, Head of Legal at institutional staking provider Twinstake, described it as a “recalibration toward assets with multiple return drivers,” noting that while Bitcoin remains “the primary institutional store-of-value proxy,” Ethereum “offers exposure to a broader smart-contract ecosystem.”
Why It Matters
Harvard selling Bitcoin? Not great.
Harvard selling Bitcoin to buy ETH? Well, that’s a bit more interesting.
There is more and more evidence that ETH is entering the crypto conversation alongside Bitcoin as the clear #2 asset to buy.
BlackRock talks about ETH perhaps more than Bitcoin these days.
And now major institutions are tracking the BTC / ETH ratio, looking at which asset has underperformed, and making portfolio decisions based on the analysis.
That seems like a bet that both ETH and BTC will be around for a while, and that both will have a real shot to find new ATHs.
They are very different assets though, and it would have been interesting to hear more from Harvard on those differences.
Bitcoin is a store of value play. ETH is a productive asset. Plus, it’s infrastructure, along with smart contract, and privacy, and perhaps even the AI integration layer.
There are plenty of reasons to be bullish on ETH and in some ways, moreso than even Bitcoin.
Harvard seems to agree…
This article has been published in decrypt.co via Yahoo News.
